The Death of Cocoa

Having Objective-C and Swift code interoperate in a meaningful way from launch was a strategic — and arguably necessary — decision. Allowing the more adventurous engineers within a team a low-risk way to introduce Swift into existing code bases has been crucial to the wide adoption the new language has already seen. But for all of the effort that’s been put into source mapping and API auditing, there’s an argument to be made that Cocoa has become something of a liability.

What if we were to build a new Foundation from the Swift Standard Library? What would we do differently, and how could we learn from the mistakes of our past?

This may seem an odd thesis for NSHipster, a site founded upon a great deal of affection for Objective-C and Cocoa, but it’s one worth exploring.